Get started with the Power BI mobile app on Android tablets

10/13/20175 minutes to readContributors

In this article

The Power BI mobile app for Android tablets delivers the mobile BI experience for Power BI, Power BI Report Server, and Reporting Services. View and interact with your company dashboards on premises and in the cloud from anywhere, with live, touch-enabled mobile access. Explore the data in dashboards, and share with your colleagues in email or text messages.

First things first

Power BI can run on a number of different Android tablets. Your tablet needs to be running the Android 5.0 operating system, or later. To check on your tablet, go to Settings > About device > Android version.

Start when you open the app Even without signing up or signing in, after you open the app you can flip through the sign-in pages for a quick overview of things you can do with the Power BI app on your Android tablet. Tap Skip to view and explore the samples, and get hands-on experience with the app. You can go back to the samples whenever you want from the dashboards home page.

Sign up for the Power BI service on the web

If you haven't signed up yet, go to the Power BI service (http://powerbi.com/) to sign up for your own account for creating and storing dashboards and reports, and bringing your data together. Then sign in to Power BI from your Android tablet to see your own dashboards from anywhere.

Try the Power BI and Reporting Services samples

Even without signing up, you can play with the Power BI and Reporting Services samples. After you download the app, you can view the samples or get started. Go back to the samples whenever you want from the dashboards home page.

Power BI samples

You can view and interact with the Power BI dashboard samples, but there are a few things you can't do with them. You can't open the reports behind the dashboards, share the samples with others, or make them your favorites.

Tap the global navigation button in the upper-left corner.

Tap Settings > Discover our samples, then pick a role and explore the sample dashboard for that role.

Reporting Services mobile report samples

Tap the global navigation button in the upper-left corner.

Tap Reporting Services samples, then open either the Retail Reports or the Sales Reports folder to explore their KPIs and mobile reports.

Search for a dashboard or report

Tap the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner , then type the term to find.

By default it searches all dashboards and reports, but you can search just one or the other.

Find your content in the Power BI mobile apps

Your dashboards and reports are stored in different locations in the Power BI mobile apps, depending on where they came from. Read about finding your content in the mobile apps. Plus you can always search for anything you have in the Power BI mobile apps.

View your favorite dashboards, KPIs, and reports

On the Favorites page in the mobile apps, you can view all of your favorite Power BI dashboards, together with KPIs and reports on the Power BI Report Server or Reporting Services web portal. When you make a dashboard a favorite in the Power BI mobile app, you can access it from all of your devices, including the Power BI service in your browser.

Tap Favorites.

Your Power BI favorites and your favorites from the Power BI Report Server and Reporting Services web portal are all on this page.

Enterprise support for the Power BI mobile apps

Organizations can use Microsoft Intune to manage devices and applications, including the Power BI mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Microsoft Intune lets organizations control items like requiring an access pin, controlling how data is handled by the application, and even encrypting application data when the app isn't in use.

Note

If you use the Power BI mobile app on your Android device and your organization has configured Microsoft Intune MAM, then background data refresh is turned off. The next time you enter the app, Power BI refreshes the data from the Power BI service on the web.

Next steps

Here are some other things you can do in the Android tablet app for Power BI with dashboards and reports in Power BI, and reports and KPIs in the Power BI Report Server or Reporting Services web portal.